Stats and chance

I realize that many manuals would be published over the years unpacking just how to handle those non-combat situations that a PC can encounter.  How far can you jump?  How well do you tie that rope?  How well can you buckle that belt?  And on and on.

When I first came back to the game in the early 00s, the prospect of a fully developed non-combat skill system was appealing.  All too often, when I had played D&D in the past, everything eventually became a 10% chance.  Jumping across a 10' wide pit? 10% chance.  Jumping across a flaming gorge between flying arrows in order to grasp a dangling vine?  10% chance.  Trying to tie your shoelaces?  10% chance.  It became ridiculous, and it was just as easy to forgo a roll of the dice and just say 'you do it.' 

Problem is, the game then becomes nothing more than a mutual story telling time of assured success until the only random moments - combat - occur.  So there needed to be something.  Like so many things with the 3rd Editions, what appeared to be a solution became its own problem.  Endless possible combinations of skills and modifiers made a single leap across a chasm into an evening of calculations.  And if you cut corners?  Well, back to the 10%.  Or just Take 10, and you're back at guaranteed success.  So what to do?

Over at Monsters and Manuals, a discussion about how to play out those non-combat moments of play. The preference seems to be reducing things to a d6.  That might work.  I prefer a 10 sided die. But only sometimes.  Occasionally percentage dice.  But as often as not, I try to work in player stats.  After all, those stats should be more than just one use numbers.  They are what makes the character. 

Sure, they can be used for role playing.  My son had a fighter who had a 4 intelligence, and we had quite a bit of fun watching him unpack why he had that.  He didn't have to be stupid, it was determined.  He was just unlearned.  A simple man with common sense (he had a higher wisdom score).  That's one use beyond the standard game benefits.

But why not have those stats mean something when it comes to jumping that chasm?  Or leaping to grab those vines?  If time permits, I might even turn to a survival guide or an article I just read.  But I might have the player roll against the pertinent stat.  There might be two rolls.  Or I might combine two stats and divide, adn make that the score to beat.  In any event, that helps the players be conscientious of their own strengths and weaknesses.

After all, if I were chasing someone across the roofs of a cityscape, and suddenly they jumped over a wide alley, I'd stop.  I know I'm not that strong or fit anymore.  Nor am I that nimble.  Likewise my players - my family - have learned what strengths they have and they use them, or don't use them as the case may be.

Again, I don't adhere religiously to any form, and can mix things up at a moment's notice.  But to not use the stats for determining success?  That leaves a huge hunk of what those numbers mean out of the equation.  And beyond just imagining what the PC looked like to begin with, it also becomes a chance to role play on the spot based on tangible figures, and that's one of the best parts of the game. 

Undead in Dungeons and Dragons

It's not easy to invoke fear among players of a pencil and paper game.  Especially for a generation raised on the time honored 'save/reload' style of video game play.  Death is cheap.  At best, an inconvenience.  How does one make death something you truly fear?  Well, you make it more than just 'roll up a new character'.  You hit them where it hurts.  And it hurts in few other ways more than having to recalculate and reduce all of your abilities, only to start from scratch a level or two lower than you were a moment earlier.

Such is the wonder of the Level Draining abilities of certain undead.  One thing I remind my boys when we play: In the end, it's a game.  In the early days, many rules were implemented for the sake of game play.  Fans and devotees would ascribe meaning and insight to various game mechanics over the decades.  I personally have my own image of what Level Draining is and why it causes one to lose abilities and learned skills.  But in the end, it was there as a game mechanic to give the lords of the netherworld a bit more umph. 

And that it does.  This is keenly felt when setting the early versions in juxtaposition to the later 3 and 3.5 editions of D&D.  Like many things, those editions seemed to strip the game from its historical and literary roots, and replace everything with a +2 bonus to this or that die roll.  Even the much feared Level Drain was given a few safety nets.  One could still experience it, but you had chances.  There were opportunities to go toe to toe with a Wight or a Wraith and still come out more or less unscathed.

But not in 1st Edition.  Back then, one hit, one measly little slap, and you just lost an entire level, perhaps weeks or months of game play.  Against the more terrifying foes like Spectres or Vampires, you lose a whopping 2 Levels!  Ouch.  But that's good.

For the undead should terrify.  With some skill, a game session can be creepy, perhaps even scary.  We ran one a few autumns ago, right around Halloween, and it couldn't have been better suited to give a few chills.  I'll unpack that particular jaunt through haunted manors and graveyard mausoleums someday.  On the whole, however, instilling fear isn't easy.  Some healthy reluctance to send a 1st level party against a colossal Red Dragon may be there, but actual fear of something worse than hit point loss, or even character death, is needed for those special cases.

And undead is a special case. Let's face it, we'd all love to see a ghost.  A real live ghost.  And yet it would terrify us just the same.  Even the thought of it terrifies.  All of materialist atheism hangs on a gossamer thread of one verifiable encounter with a supernatural element.  That is the power of meeting the afterlife, the netherworld.  And so when the PCs meet such creatures of the hereafter, the encounter should come with a greater price than 'lose 5 hit points.'  There should be something more.

Ghosts and mummies have their own special attacks, and ghouls and ghasts as good as always.  But it's those level draining undead.  Two or three game minutes with a Vampire, and your 10th level fighter may be back to square one, or at least level four.  And that hurts.  Sure there are magical ways around this.  But as anyone who follows the unpacking of my blog will realize, magic doesn't fall about in my campaign world like apples from a tree.  To obtain such a prize as 'Restoration' will require an epic quest in its own right.  And therein lies the fun of the old versions. 

3.5 almost discouraged such trauma, and made playing safe. I know why they did it.  I understand the marketing and sales aspects.  Yet it stole from the impact.  It reduced the stark terror that encountering such a creature should invoke.  So here's to the Level Draining undead of the early D&D editions.  They scared the pants off the first party I ever played in all those years ago.  They still do quite a job of instilling fear today, as it should be.